


On Opposite Ends

by halfway_there_halfway_dead



Category: The Dragon Prince (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Magic, Post Book 3, Siblings, Someone please teach me how to tag, Third Person Limited, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:27:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21735256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfway_there_halfway_dead/pseuds/halfway_there_halfway_dead
Summary: Foresight has never been one of Soren’s strong suits. Despite that, even he saw this coming.//Soren and Claudia meet again as enemies. But Soren only sees his little sister.
Relationships: Claudia & Soren (The Dragon Prince)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 69





	On Opposite Ends

Foresight has never been one of Soren’s strong suits. He’s mostly a reactionary type of guy. He’s never put much thought into “what if” scenarios because he never really saw much point in that. He’s a soldier, first and foremost, and his main duty is to obey orders. He has no qualms with leaving the planning and strategy to his superiors. 

That being said, despite his lack of foresight, even he saw this coming. 

He raises his sword to parry the oncoming attack but it does nothing. His sword shatters upon impact, the pieces scattering. Soren drops the useless hilt and reaches for his dagger. He isn’t as adept with it as he is with a sword but he can’t exactly complain. He raises it, ready to send it hurtling towards his opponent.

But he can’t. 

Unconsciously, he loosens his grip on the dagger and it tumbles to the ground. In front of him, Claudia approaches, aiming that tainted Sunfire elf staff right at him. Her eyes are glowing purple, black hair rising as dark magic coalesces around her.

He has always felt in awe when Claudia was at work. He would watch with wide eyed wonderment at how she could extract the essence of magic from the creatures she carried and manipulate them to her will, at how she could take out dozens of men twice her size with just a few breaths and a whisper. Every single time, he’d been beside her. Every single time, he’d been proud.

Now his heart only aches. This isn’t the way it should be. Brothers and sisters shouldn't stand on opposite ends of a battlefield.

  
  
“Claudia,” he says, and it has been so long since he has seen her, so long since he has uttered her name, that it feels like a plea. Like if he says it enough, maybe all this will end, and they will stand beside each other once more. 

“Quiet, traitor.” 

The words slice through him like a knife. He has seen her angry. He has seen her frustrated. He has never seen her like this. This quiet fury that hums through her body, that blazes through her eyes, that makes the magic around them flare and fall and flare again. For the first time in his life, he is afraid of her. 

“Come with me,” Soren pleads, because she is his sister. Because afraid as he is, as far as he is concerned, she is the only family he has left. “You can still make the right choice. Please, Claudia.”

His sister regards his plea with distaste. “I won’t betray Father.” The look she gives him is scathing. “I won’t be like you.” 

“Clauds-”

At the nickname, his sister’s fury intensifies and he can feel the magic respond to her fury. A flick of her wrist and suddenly he’s on his knees, the impact of the fall resonating up his spine. 

“I thought I told you,” Claudia growls, “to be _quiet_.” 

He swallows the lump forming in his throat, tries to ignore the stinging in his eyes. He moves to stand but there is an invisible force holding him still. For a moment, he allows himself to feel proud. She has gotten so strong. Even someone as ignorant in magic as he is, he can sense it. But he can also sense the toll, the fatigue and exhaustion. The pride dissipates and he is left feeling hollow. He wonders how much of herself she’s given up. He wonders how much their father has pushed her. 

“I want to help you,” he whispers, voice strained and desperate. He eyes the white patch in her hair that has grown since his departure. He notes the shadows in her face. He never should have left her there. He should have made her come with him. He should have made her see sense. “Please, Claudia, I only want to help. I’m your brother.” 

  
“And you were Lord Viren’s son,” she replies, coldly. “Tell me, brother, did it help him when you drove your sword into his chest?”

His breath hitches at the statement, heart heavy. It had only been an illusion, a dirty trick to distract them from what was really going on. But the guilt of his deed does not leave him. The image of his father’s bloody corpse cannot be erased from his mind’s eye. And the look on his sister’s face, the hurt and betrayal, is not something so easily forgotten. 

Worst of all though is that for a moment, when his father’s body hit the ground and he’d supposedly taken his last breath, Soren had felt relieved. Relieved that it was all over. Relieved that he was finally free. That, more than anything, fills him with self loathing and shame. 

“He wasn’t real,” Soren protests weakly. 

“You didn’t know that,” she seethes, her voice rising. “For all you knew, that really was our father. And you _killed_ him!”

He flinches at the accusation and looks away. He knows he did it to protect Ezran, to protect the king. He is a Crownguard. It is his duty to terminate any and all threats to the royal family. And yet he can’t help but think, maybe he could have done something else, anything else, instead of plunging steel right into his father’s heart. 

The wind picks up as Claudia’s anger heightens. 

“We were family!” She’s screaming now and the magic surges, bright and hot. “How could you do that to your family? How could you leave us?”

The energy thickens, enveloping them so wholly Soren nearly chokes in it. 

“ _How could you leave me?_ ”

That cry causes him to snap his head up and their eyes meet. The purple glow is gone and all he sees is her green eyes welling up with tears. The anguish in them only adds to his own, worsening the ache in his chest until it’s almost unbearable. Oh stars, Soren wants to reach out to her. He wants to comfort her like he used to, to bring her under the covers of his bed and hold her til all this goes away and becomes nothing more than a distant memory. 

But he can’t. He can’t move. He can’t even speak. He was supposed to look after her. He was supposed to protect her. Now he can only watch as the magic feeds off of her rage and comes alive. It pulsates, it beats, and he can feel it. It wants to strike. It wants to hurt him. 

His heart hammers against his ribs, terror deep in his belly as Claudia rises in the air, eyes once more glowing purple before it recedes into a deep, inky black. The black spreads across her face, trailing down her neck, filling her veins. 

_You’re going to die._

The revelation, he realizes, doesn’t come as a surprise. His mind calms as the storm around him grows, like it knows it was meant to be this way, like he was always meant to fall by his sister’s hands. He rises along with her, wind and blood pumping through his ears.

_This is the end._

His eyes become heavy. His body grows limp. Darkness eats away at the edge of his vision. It takes so much effort just to breath. 

_No!_

He fights against the hold on him, against the darkness creeping at his periphery, against the horror that threatens to keep him frozen. 

“Claudia,” he rasps, but his voice gets lost in the flurry, whisked away by the winds. “Claudia!”

Every cell in his body is telling him she’s lost to him now. He won’t be able to bring her back from this, they say, that the darkness of the magic she so proudly wields has finally overtaken her. 

But she is his sister. She is the same snotty nosed brat that used to crawl into his bed after a nightmare. She is the same annoying sibling that used to steal his share of the night’s dessert. She is the same sister who would pick him back up, time and time again, when he got in way too over his head. 

So he can’t believe that. He can’t believe that underneath all that isn’t the sister he loved. And maybe that’s stupid of him, but he doesn’t care. 

He breaks away from the hold just enough to reach out to her. His hand caresses the edge of her blackening cheek. It burns him, the black, and he can feel its desire, its outrage. It wants to hurt. He pays it no mind. He continues to struggle against the pressure, stretching his other hand toward her shoulder. 

Then Soren embraces her. The magic erupts in a spectacle of heat and shadows. It attacks him, stains him, crawling into his skin and burrowing in. He ignores how it scorches through his veins, how it leaves his body feeling charred. He knows this magic will break him apart from the inside out. He only pulls Claudia into him, tucks her head into the crook of his neck. Because he’s never been very smart. But at least, they can say, he tried to be a good brother.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if it's a little OOC. I hope you enjoyed it anyway!


End file.
